Daily Archives: Aug 14, 2012

Soccer managers are fond of using a little-and-large striking partnership. One barrel-chested giant of a man to batter through the opposition, the other a nifty little fellow who bamboozles them with his agility.

Now barrel-chested China and nifty Costa Rica (4.6m population) appear to be in the initial stages of just such a partnership. Read more

Kenya’s ambitions to become Africa’s information-technology hub have received a boost from the US technology giant IBM, which is establishing a research laboratory in Nairobi’s Catholic University of Eastern Africa.

The project announced on Monday is a joint venture, with the Kenyan government’s ICT Board and IBM each contributing $10m of funding over the next five years. While the Kenyan government will cover overheads and local research staff, IBM will provide technology, senior scientists and access to intellectual property for the project which will come into operation in September. Read more

When could a potential downgrade be a welcome relief? When you’re a broker or fund manager in Athens struggling with disappearing volume and complete lack of interest from major international investment institutions. When the general hubbub of a trading floor has been replaced with the quiet contemplation of fishermen interrupted by occasional shouts of joy when a real customer nibbles at the bait of depressed prices. Read more

China is heading for a record year for outbound M&A as more buying opportunities emerge in Europe and US amid the economic slowdown.

Outbound deal values have tripled in the first half of 2012, according to research released by PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong on Tuesday. North American and European companies are the favourites for Chinese buyers for their head-start in technology and energy resources, according to the report. Read more

The European Union’s new member states in eastern Europe are mostly out of the eurozone. But they aren’t free of its economic troubles.

Hungary has joined the Czech Republic in recession, according to the latest quarterly gross domestic products numbers. And with Romania and Bulgaria struggling to achieve growth, only Slovakia of the five countries in the region reporting second quarter GDP data on Tuesday posted a decent increase – 2.7 per cent year-on-year.

Domestic consumption was weak almost everywhere. As in western Europe, austerity is biting hard. Read more

Tuesday’s picks from the BB team: Egypt’s president Mohamed Morsi removes the army top brass from power – will democracy now flourish? Growing volumes of business litigation demonstrate a strengthening of the rule of law in China; the challenges of improving Brazil’s telecoms; plus, what type of energy will work for South Africa?Read more

The trouble, however, is that digging up this kind of historical data has traditionally been a laborious undertaking, particularly for retail investors without access to expensive terminals like Bloomberg or Reuters.

Not any more – at least in Hong Kong, thanks to a powerful, free, online database created by David Webb, the corporate governance activist. Read more

India inflation in July came in well below expectations, according to data released Tuesday, but economists said the 6.87 per cent figure – down from 7.25 per cent last month – is unlikely to move the Reserve Bank of India to cut rates at its next meeting on September 17.

Provisional export data, also released on Tuesday, showed a 14.8 per cent fall in July exports, to $22.4bn, and a 7.61 per cent fall in imports, to $37.9bn, producing a $15.5bn trade deficit. Read more

Headline inflation fell to 6.87 per cent year-on-year in July, down from 7.25 per cent in June, according to Indian government data released Tuesday.

The headline inflation figure came in well below consensus of 7.37 per cent, but may not be enough to comfort the Reserve Bank of India, the governor of which again emphasised his inflation concerns on Monday and which is unlikely to cut rates at its meeting next month.